So, since last weekend, the Astros have lost Hunter Brown, Cristian Javier, and Jake Meyers to injuries. Josh Hader and Bennett Sousa are still on the IL. Five of what everyone presumed were key contributors to this roster entering this year. Not the best development for a club looking to shake off the injury bug from last season.
It feels rather premature to describe a situation as bleak in early April, at least under normal circumstances. I mean, a 6-7 record on April 8 isn’t a reason to panic. But, mercy, the magnitude of the injuries, in addition to a 1-5 stretch against the A’s and Rockies, does force one to reevaluate a bit. The loss of Brown, particularly, is going to be nearly impossible for the Astros to overcome. There aren’t many, if any, teams built to survive the loss of a top-three pitcher in Cy Young voting the season before. Losing Javier, even for how ineffective he has been thus far in 2026, removes one more arm from the depth chart. That six-man rotation feels more like a dream than a reality at this point.
To be honest, today’s game felt over too soon, not long after it started. With Javier only lasting one inning due to a shoulder injury, allowing a run, it was basically on a heavily used bullpen to somehow absorb the rest. This time, the first reliever in action was AJ Blubaugh. And it most certainly didn’t go well as the right-hander allowed five earned runs in only one inning. A 6-0 lead after two innings at Coors Field isn’t an insurmountable deficit, but the vibes weren’t good. Between Javier’s and Meyers’ injuries and the state of the game, you can certainly see why this team needs an off day in the worst possible way, even if it occurs on the road.
Of the six pitchers used by the Astros, only one (Kai-Wei Teng) didn’t allow a run. Enyel De Los Santos threw two innings, allowing a run, but the fact that he was the first Houston pitcher of the day to generate six outs was a relief. Also, depressing. Christian Roa’s control was, well, missing. And Bryan Abreu has now allowed a run in every appearance this season, five in total.
Remember that lineup that we all were fawning over a week ago? Yeah, there wasn’t much to see as *checks notes* Michael Lorenzen held the bats to one run in 5 2/3 innings. Zach Agnos, who had a 6.61 ERA and a 5.62 FIP in 31 1/3 innings last season, held the Astros to just one hit in 3 1/3 scoreless innings. Brice Matthews drove in a run in the second inning with an RBI single to tie the game early, the last bit of optimism that I experienced with this team for today.
There is little doubt in my mind that we’ve probably seen the last of Javier for a little while. Shoulder injuries, even if they’re not ultimately all that serious, tend to sideline pitchers for at least a couple of weeks, if not longer. It was clear from the start that Javier wasn’t right, both from watching the game and from the metrics. For example, with his four-seam fastball, its IVB (induced vertical break) was uncharacteristically different.
The starting rotation now is essentially Mike Burrows, Tatsuya Imai, Lance McCullers Jr., and whoever else isn’t injured. You have to think that Blubaugh might get a look as a starter sooner than we thought. Cody Bolton perhaps gets another start or two. Ryan Weiss, even with his recent struggles, could see himself in the rotation. Jason Alexander provided some much-needed depth last year and will likely be relied upon to do the same again. How this team fills out a six-man rotation behind Burrows, Imai, and McCullers is anyone’s guess.
Feature photo from @rockies on X, Source
There is a sense of chaos in this team. Right or wrong, these situations are usually “fixed” by removing the manager.
13 games in? You do it midseason you’re only looking at elevating someone internally. I guess Omar Lopez is an option, but I just don’t see them doing it right now. Maybe closer to the deadline if the Astros have established themselves as seller not buyers
do we want lame duck DB drafting this year tho? especially with 2 first round picks.
How much of what frustrates you about DB’s front office is really attributable to crane/bagwell?
As far as espada goes, i’m undecided on what i think about him for manager. People relentlessly would blast Hinch (remember “Hinch’d”?) and Dusty (I was one of more vocal critics of Dusty) too.
Outside of how much Espada pitched Hunter in the opener, I’ve been okay with most of his decisions. sometimes the players just have to play, though.
im frustrated with whoever drafted Brice Mathews and dont want them drafting anymore players for the Astros
The scouting director who selected Brice Matthews is gone. While DB probably had final say in the first round pick but I truly believe it wasn’t his first choice. We have been chasing high school infielders for years now.
Also I don’t see a reason to give up on Matthews yet. He has a BABIP of .222 and allthough his BA is abysmal and SOs are high he has a 0.0 war. He will get a huge shot with Meyers out now.
I don’t know that he’s going to return on his first round investment, but I will say despite the .136 BA, 2026 Brice does seem to be better than 2025 Brice. His contact rate is up. Still lower than MLB average but its headed in the right direction. So… progress?
Not sure what your issue with Matthews would be. The Astros drafted Matthews 28th. There was only 1 player in the first round drafted after him to play a MLB game to this point and that was Kevin McGonigle who signed for a higher bonus than Matthews did.
In the 2nd round, it’s really just been Luke Keaschall you could argue the Astros should have drafted.
Nats did it with the first overall pick. Its hard to say how much DB really makes the decision or not. He has promoted his guys now.
Why wouldn’t you? His draft successes, considering where the Astros have been drafting, have been as good as prior GMs. He wasn’t gifted the ability to tank and get three consecutive #1 picks.
And now nobody is gifted that ability with the lottery. As the White Sox and Rockies have found out, painfully, a few times.
What Lunhow (and later Elias) did is not directly replicable again.
Making trades would also be problematic as a lame duck GM.
I would love for the Astros to be clearly buyers or clearly sellers, and not somewhere in the middle like they’ve found themselves in recent years.
If we are teetering on the brink of still being a contender at the deadline them I’m afraid Dana might go all scorched earth and trade anything and everything we got to try and save his job.
If not the bench coach, that kind if “interim manager” could turn out to be Jeff Bagwell or Craig Biggio. I doubt the outcome would be good.
I don’t want the season to go poorly obviously. But if we are doing badly around the ASB, I expect Espada to be gone.
Yeah, agreed that it’s way to early to consider making that move, and that those moves typically happen during the 2nd half of the season.
Chaos 13 games into the season? I week ago they were 5-2 and no one was even suggesting any chaos. This seems to be a massive overreaction, but that’s your game.
I can’t speak for Ragtime or anyone else, but I have not been a fan of Espada’s management for going on two years. I would imagine that most (not all) reactions suggesting his possible removal, that aren’t foaming-at-the-mouth angry, will be rooted in longer term disagreements with him, not just the way this series went.
Keep in mind RT was a big opponent to Dusty Baker as well. He’s just never satisfied with the manager, even one who won a World Series.
Bring up Cy-Feld and Arghetti. Send Blanco to the 60 day and add JP France back in the mix. Call Giolito’s people and spend some money. We have options. To do nothing though….would be to continue to buy the junked-car from the car-lot salesmen Dana, in the , “I’m feeling good and positive about xyz,” situation he always says.
Lets be real, losing Javier is addition by subtraction. Blubaugh did get a look as a starter after Javier left and gave up 5 ER now 10.80 ERA. Im not sure what the solution is, Spencer? Alexander? Gordon? thats about all we got and its not looking good.
This was always gonna happen. And it’s not specific to the astros either. It seems like every MLB team has to go like 9 starting pitchers deep through the course of a 162 game season. Every year in spring, theres always some story about “oh the dodgers have so many starting pitchers what are they going to do with them all?” and then October comes and its like “with no starting pitching healthy, dodgers have to piecemeal Game 3 and 4 with spare parts”
Guys like alexander and France were always going to be important parts of the 2026 team because of it.
if the infield logjam is bogus, starting pitching logjams are the myths of all myths
“Every year in spring, theres always some story about “oh the dodgers have so many starting pitchers what are they going to do with them all?” and then October comes and its like “with no starting pitching healthy, dodgers have to piecemeal Game 3 and 4 with spare parts”
This ☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼
Prime example is 2017 (and 2019, look at the rotation behind JV and Cole…..insane how much those 2 carried us).
Our offense was the driving force yes…but it also took literally top heavy pitching and spare parts to get to the top.
2017, in hindsight….was pretty extraordinary to win with the pitching we had. JV and Keuchel were great, but….
Keuchel missed time with injuries, so did LMJ (who ended up being one of our firemen), Morton was still a relative unknown (where he was injured EVERYWHERE before Houston), Peacock finished second on the team in starting pitcher WAR (which NO ONE had on their bingo card), and JV was a Waiver Deadline trade (when it still existed) and made only 5 starts for us.
Guess who led the team in games started??? Yeah…..the fucking rat….28 games started….and had the worst WAR of the rotation.
That’s right. in 2017, alds game 3, peacock initially got the nod as the #3 starter, over a Lance who was coming back from injury. Game 3 didnt go well. Neither for Peacock, nor for Lance who came in for relief. That reset everythign and for alcs and after, Peacock was put in relief (and was phenomenal) and Lance took over as the #3 starter
It still takes me aback how good Peacock was in 2017…I double take every time I look at the BR page. Lol
132 innings, 161 Ks (11.0 Ks/9), 3.00 ERA, 3.07 FIP (so it wasn’t a fluke), 1.189 WHIP
He was probably my favorite Astro of that team after Altuve.
Juts a really nice humble guy. AJ said he was the only pitcher who wouldnt fight or resist him when he came to take the ball away from him, and actually encouraged him to resist.
He was part of the 100 loss teams too. And they interviewed him when the team was a 100 win team and asked him if back then he thought the process would ever lead to winning days
He said “I thought the team would probably be successful in the future, but I just didnt ever think I would be a part of those teams.”
I have a relatively hard time ascribing blame for anything this year to Dana. Crane continues to sacrifice future for present and did so at the 2025 deadline by acquiring Correa and his $22-25m AAV salary.
Having said that, I’m very much over Espada. This is the third year in a row the team hasn’t clicked and it’s not like we’re facing top tier competition. The Angels, A’s, and Rockies all missed the playoffs in 2025 and are projected to miss in 2026 as well. We also benefitted from catching the Red Sox (whether they wind up good or bad) at a very fortunate time where they can’t seem to put it together either.
I just feel like he’s really bad over promising, under delivering….like real bad. We are still waiting for his draft picks to do something as well, so that can’t be graded yet. But our rotation, as he said, “will really be surprising people.” Yeah it is…
did you like Click better? I never thought Click was all that great. That 2022 championship was mostly Luhnow’s really, imo
I’m not down on Dana, at all, but I did like Click over him. Click found some decent pieces in later rounds like Loperfido, Arrighetti, McDermott,Colton Gordon, Blubaugh, Zach Cole, Dezenzo, etc. He seemed to find players that were at least 4th outfielders in drafts where most players never even make it past AA.
While I think you might be right on decent pieces in later rounds. Click whiffed with some really poor drafting decisions in 2020 and 2021. Whitaker and Santos are misses as our first pick in both drafts, and the second pick in 2021 was another high schooler in Ulloa.
Maybe its what you said and Click never shook a Tampa mind set. But those picks make more sense when you have high floor college guys drafted above you, and not as big swings during a real restricted draft class during a dynasty.
Sure, but those weren’t first round picks due to the sign stealing punishment.
I liked Click’s methodology. He drafted as well as he could with the sanctions. He wanted Contreras as a catcher. There is a world out there where we get Contreras, didn’t have Maldy, and still have Wilyer Abreu in our outfield.
To me, there were reasons Dana wasn’t a GM until the twilight years.
im also not sold on dana, but i often felt like click imposed more sanctions on himself than he needed to. It frequently felt like he was still operating like a Rays front office guy when he had much more money and a more committed owner behind him in Crane.
from what i understand crane was the driving force behind extending yuli before he won his batting title and gold glove, and signing JV to his 1 year deal in 2022 when he won the cy. crane drove bringing back brantley too, and was the one who at least offered 6/210 to correa.
not saying the crane being charge was good, but it felt like Click was given the keys to a porsche but would have still driven it like a kia if not for crane telling him we need to freaking go for this.
I’ll pushback on the Contreras trade. The purpose of getting another catcher was about game-calling and defense, which the Astros valued. Contreras was horrible at this. If you recall, he was so bad the next season with the Cardinals, due to complaints from the pitching staff, that they removed him as the regular catcher. While I’d love to have Abreu, I absolutely did not want Contreras on that World Series winning roster.
Let me ask you this:
The Astros weren’t leaving that deadline without getting a catcher.
Which trigger would you rather have pulled?
Urquidy for Contreras?
Or Wilyer Abreu 😩 for Vazquez.
I’m not gonna complain about a WS no hitter and a ring, but Wilyer in the WBC….😲
Honestly, I am not sure they win the WS with Willson Contreras. Game 4 of the WS was a pivotal win for the Astros.
I liked Click a lot. The issue most people seem to gloss over with the “that was Luhnow” is that Click inherited a team that was significantly over the CBT in 2020 and over the course of 3 seasons shed like $60m AAV of contract commitments and won a World Series without spending much of anything.
Since Click was ousted, Dana/Crane have spent on Javier ($64m), Hader ($100m), Abreu ($58m), Walker ($60m), Montero ($32m) Verlander ($60m), Correa ($60m+) and Brantley ($16m) and received very little if any value.
Sometimes, the best deals are the ones that you don’t make and Click did a great job not overpaying for declining players.
One could counter that the A’s and Rockies caught the Astros at a very fortunate time. The 162-game season is weeks of peaks and valleys every year. Both Astros championship seasons involved sweeps by the A’s (and another bad team), who were not good either of those seasons. This shit happens to nearly every WS contender throughout a long season.
Yep. No use in overreacting (in terms of ROS predictions) based on this, no matter how embarrassing it is.
As I noted in the Discord gamethread, the Blue Jays lost two of three to the same Rockies team, and they have enormous pressure to return to the ALCS at least this year.
You could, but the Astros aren’t expected to make the playoffs this year and certainly aren’t WS contenders.
Were the Rangers WS contenders in 2023? How about the Nationals in 2019? Cards in 2006? The AL West is very weak. You make the postseason and you’re a WS contender.
https://x.com/Chandler_Rome/status/2042243527887958294?s=20
so you caught me while was in the middle of installing some changes to the commenting system. It can now do embeds, but for some reason, X embeds onyl work if you change the “x” to “twitter”. I’m trying to get an answer as for why that is.
so i changed the x to twitter and get this
Only the Rangers would want to be more like the Angels.
Cincy didn’t want him back I guess
Wasn’t Cam actually above 1 WAR early last season like at 1.5 or 2 before falling apart the second half? It can go down just as easily as it can go up.
Is there a way to stay logged on now? I’m still typing in my name and email for every comment. And are there profile pics now?
Yes but that doesn’t make for a catchy tweet 😂